"Trotsky, one of the co-founders of the Russian revolution, who was later killed on Stalin’s orders, loved fine food. Yet life as a revolutionary meant he didn’t always get to eat well. Here’s a look at Trotsky’s culinary life. Receiving a food package while in prison as a young man: At the end of the third month, when a straw-filled bag, prison-bread, and lice were the fixed elements of existence, as much so as day and night, one evening the guards brought me a great bundle of things from that other, utterly fantastic world; there were fresh linen, covers and a pillow, white bread, tea, sugar, ham, canned foods, apples, oranges – yes, big bright-colored oranges! Even to-day, after thirty-one years, I list all these marvelous things with emotion, and I even pull myself up for having forgotten the jar of jam, the soap and the comb for my hair. Meeting a fellow revolutionary with strange tea-drinking habits (Russians normally drink black tea with a slice of lemon): He taught me to drink tea with apple instead of lemon. On a ocean voyage from Spain to New York: The Spanish company charged high fares, and provided bad accommodations and even worse food. When taking power with Lenin in the Kremlin: The food at the Kremlin was then very bad. Instead of fresh meat, they served corned beef. The flour and the barley had sand in them. Only the red Ket caviare was plentiful, because its export had ceased. This inevitable caviare colored the first years of the revolution, and not for me alone." All extracts taken from Trotsky's autobiography, My Life. https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/mylife/index.htm